Glad you
asked. Tais Teng started out with a rather
longer name: Thijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen.
It is a perfect name for a German philosopher
or a composer of sadly underrated Lithuanian
chamber music.

For a writer Thijs
van Ebbenhorst Tengbergenjust doesn't work.

First of all
it doesn't leave much place for a picture on
the cover and it certainly won't fit on the
spine if you want your title a bit longer than
a single word.

So he shortened his
name to Tais Teng. That still left a lot of
letters so he also uses the name Ben Bergen or
Eban Hourst.

On top you
see what he looks like. A least on the back of
his books. Don't believe the photographs. He's
much more handsome.

O, by the
way, Tais Teng was born 14-4-1952, in the city
of the Hague, in the Netherlands. He lives in
Amersfoort with his wife and children.

2. So
what does he do?

Tais Teng
works as a writer, cover artist,
illustrator (Have a look in Deviantart
) and sculptor (See some sculptures here). He also
paints murals and decors for theater.
When he was a bit younger he wanted te become
a starship pilot, but writing and drawing
those places isn't too bad.

The Lowlands
are quite a small country and alas, not too
many people speak Dutch. You have to write a
lot if you want to pay your rent. Tais Teng
did. He wrote 90 books for children and young
adults, plus a dozen novels and collections
for not so young adults.

The rows of
books below gives an impression.

Right now
close to two hundred short stories have been
published.

Some of these
stories were in English. An English website
wouldn't make much sense otherwise.

Stories were
published in Amazing stories, Dragon, Albedo
one and Hardboiled, Terra Sf II and in some
periodicals he can't find right now. One,
EXPIATING ANCESTRAL SINS, was a runner up in
the ALBEDO ONE competion.You can
read them online, plus some more stories. Just
click here

Some years
ago his first American novel was published:
THE EMERALD BOY. It has about fifty full color
illustrations of his own hand. It is
quite hard to convince publishers to do that .
Right now, sadly, you can only buy it
secondhand at Amazon.com.

Well, his
face graced the cover of Out in Amersfoort, a
city guide with things to do and where to go.
You can't get much more famous. At least not
in Holland or your own city.

He also won several
awards nobody outside of Holland would
recognize. He also was one of the six runner
ups for the Aeon Award with the story
EXPIATING ANCESTRAL SINS, which has been
published in Albedo one.

4. What
kind of stuff does he write?

Tais Teng
failed to get his starship flying license so
he now writes science fiction. Those who
can't, write about it, eh?

Teng also
likes to wake up screaming in the middle of he
night: a lot of his novels are horror.

He once swore
never to write about dwarfs, wizards with long
white beards or cute speaking animals.

No dwarfs
went wrong. See the cover of one of his more
recent children's books below.

Still, they are clearly bad-ass
gangsta dwarfs, so they don't
count.

He recently
published a lot of E-Books,
both Dutch and English. Some are even free. You can read
his English stories in the collection
Lovecraft, my love.Tais Teng also likes history and
especially Vikings. Teng wrote three rather
big novels about them, two with the
trickster-god Loki as the protagonist.3. What is his deepest, heartfelt wish?

4. How can I contact him?

E-mail adresses are flooded by spam the
moment you put them on the web. You can
write your questions or comments in the http://www.tboek.nl/gastenboek/taisteng and Tais Teng will mail you back.
He looks at least once a week. Promise. All
right: taisteng (at) gmail,com would work,
too.

5. What can Tais Teng do for you?

Well, quite a lot. Most of the
pictures you see on the deviantart site are
made in Photoshop, so there aren't any
originals. If you want you can buy prints on
his deviantart site.